Television: The Blunted Needle

Television's most talked-about panel last week was the U.S. Supreme
Court, which may well have blunted the already dull needle of
parody-on-the-air by ruling that "substantial" borrowing from an
original work for a spoof is a violation of the copyright laws.

The ruling came on Jack Benny's 1953 Autolight, a is-minute filmed
take-off on the 1944 movie Gaslight, which copied Gaslight's
situations, scantily paraphrased many lines, even used the same names
for its characters. Benny's lawyers admitted that Autolight closely
reflected Gaslight, and argued this has always been necessary for good
parody. The court split four to four (the missing justice: William...